


Snowdrop

by Linae_Liminae



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Desperation, F/M, Lost in space - Freeform, Sexual Tension, at first, brash first kiss, causes problems between them, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 13:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10877766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linae_Liminae/pseuds/Linae_Liminae
Summary: It’s a delicate flower that droops. It hangs and offers only promises in metaphors and hazy prophecies. He does not understand why it comes to mind as he falls and falls for her…





	Snowdrop

His heart thrums out a steady rhythm of adrenaline and desperation in his ears. The sheer force of focus could cut through all distractions in his mind, at this very precise second and later, Shiro will be in awe of it when reality stabilizes where it should.

Except, much like the essence he has become, he does not lose focus through the madness.

Black’s controls fit his palms the way they need to; perfectly, as though he was made for them, or vice versa. His suit is a second skin, and the pressure of his helmet does not distract him. His eyes focus only where Black’s eyes follow and if he had had doubts about her being alive, they were all gone now as he feels Black’s surging power amplify the very crisp sight of the single shuttle careening through black space and into the unknown.

Amplified, empowered, a single desire too pure to fall into words or coherent thought. It spurred him before he could question the air in his lungs or the roar bursting from his lungs and through Black’s roaring cry.

His arms shove the controls with such force, he almost forgets the G-force threatening to yank his blood from his very mind. Black shatters through speeds as he follows the spinning shuttle with his eyes, soul, very _being._

_“Allura!!”  
_

Shiro faintly hears the alarmed cries of the others, Lance’s shout of despair versus Keith’s pleadings of his name. Pidge and Hunk could only exclaim while they watched the shuttle spin farther and farther out of reach.

“NO!” Lance’s voice is pained.

“Shiro, wait!!”

He does not wait, he only wills everything inside of him to keep pushing Black forward. There is a red alarm pulsing behind his helmet’s visor. The meter’s numbers spin at a blurring velocity, following the signal from his Lion as it got further and further away from the others, the castle–from safety.

“Shiro, she’s too far out into space! Shiro! Come back!”

He slams his hands further against the controls and Black pushes harder to heed his command. He does not let off, not while the shuttle is still spinning out of control. All he can focus is on how he cannot allow this mission to go more wrong than it has. He would save her this time. He will save her this time.

Coran’s image nearly breaks his focus when it flicks into his vision. His expression is grave and serious, eyebrows knitted together into a fierce scowl.

“Shiro, if you keep going, we will not just lose her but you as well. The castle is too weak and cannot follow where you are headed now!”

“Find a way,” Shiro snarls through force clenched teeth. “I’m saving Allura.”

The comms shut off, not because he does anything, probably because he needs to focus. Probably because Black wants him to focus. Probably because they were too far gone that the link just snaps, like a fine tether in a storm.

His muscles scream and somewhere behind his eyes, a migraine is forming from the strength he is clinging to with the desperation of a dying man. Spots fill his vision but he does not dare blink. The finer details of Allura’s shuttle become aware of him. The slim machinery and the protective covering that made the small one-man craft, twists, and turns. He hopes she is alright.

He knows she must be.

A finite minute passes between the space of his ribs and his heart and Shiro feels it in his stomach the right time to slow, to open the mouth of his lion. He cries out her name just as he feels the light thump of her shuttle colliding into Black’s maws.

 

 

 

 

The faint twinkle of stars follow the fading afterimages of dreams once Allura opens her eyes. She blinks a few times, a groan pulling from her throat when she registers pain everywhere, but specifically around her waist. Her face clenches when a plot of agony blooms behind her head and threatens to take her. The pain around her waist makes little sense when her mind takes in all the details needed.

She’s alive. Her visor tells her she is far too far away from the castle…and something else makes her chest tighten.

The pain around her waist abates just as she feels movement and her mind takes a familiar black mantle for an unknown amount of time.

She comes back to faded purple and white light and Shiro’s relieved expression.

“Shiro?” Her voice echoes in her ears in a way that confirm her helmet is gone, and so is the main pain around her head.

“Thank God,” she hears him sigh before she is being elevated and crushed to the hardness of his chest. “I feared the worst.”

“I’m fine,” Allura huffs quietly but does nothing to push him away. His hold is caging, yet comforting, but the silence around them is much too dreadful for her to continue in his arms.

“Shiro, the Black Lion,” she begins.

“She’s offline… well, most of her anyway.” Shiro says, still clinging to her. Allura stiffens, her eyes wide. “It’s alright… we’re not too far from the nearest star. Black still has enough power to get close enough to replenish strength.”

Allura moves to pull away when a sharp pain takes her from around her waist and up her spine. She hardly has time to breathe before he pulls away and begins running his hands over her body. “Where are you injured, show me.”

Allura reels, her mind spinning as she inhales. “I’m not…”

Shiro stops and looks her in the eyes. His eyes were so focused, serious, heated. “You’re sure?”

She can’t feel a little annoyed. “Of course, I’m sure,” she says tersely. Glad that everything was making more and more sense. “I think I’d know if I–”

The pressure on his mouth on hers scatters what remaining sense she has. Allura can barely gasp before he’s pulling away and pressing another kiss to her lips. It’s hard, tight–nothing like the gentle kisses she’s fantasized about receiving from him. It’s almost unpleasant if not for the fact that her entire body felt like it was on _fire_  after such a kiss. Like a flame caught in space, however, it’s snuffed out once he pulls away and she sees his lips bearing a kiss-stung shade. His eyes are wide and surprised, shocked…

Allura doesn’t know if she hates him or wants to pull him into her again.

“I’m sorry,” he shudders. She hates him. “I shouldn’t have…”

“Yes,” her words cut through him. “You shouldn’t have. And now we’re both stuck here with nowhere to go inside the Black Lion.”

Shiro pulls away and she doesn’t notice his hands around her shoulders until they’re off her. His eyes do not hide the wounded look fast enough from her cold gaze.

“I wanted to save you.”

Her fingers clench at her sides and she feels pain now. “In saving me, you’ve doomed the universe.”

“Allura–”

“You should have let me go.”

The vacuum of space was nothing to the ice in her throat. Shiro says nothing, his expression downcast while Allura decidedly turns her face away to glare at the metal around them. A moment later, Shiro walks away, his footsteps echoing in her ears as the only sound between them…and certain death.

 

 

 

 

The tension between them only gets heavier after Shiro turns on the Black Lion’s systems and cruises them in the direction of the nearest star. They distance is shorter than the length of Earth’s Sun and Kerberos, but at this energy level, it would take them a few days to be close enough to power at full strength.

“What about a distress beacon?” Allura asks, arms tight around her middle. “The Castle should be able to pick it up without an issue.”

“The Castle took heavy damage in the battle we were just in, Princess,” Shiro replies like he would any other commanding officer. His voice cold and detached. “It would still take a while for us to be rescued.”

Allura said nothing for a moment and Shiro remained still against his controls.

“What about nearby planets? Any luck we could land and gather our bearings there?”

Shiro maneuvered the controls over the screen, showing her Black’s results of the system ahead. The diagram showed several gas planets in orbit around the sun. He pointed to one on the other side of the sun. “This would be our only option, but as you can see, it won’t work. It’s too far away.”

“So, we’re stuck inside the Black Lion for who know’s how long until we have enough power and can hope to find the castle.”

“Yes.”

Allura presses the heels of her hands against her eyes and sighs. “It’s our only option at this point. Alright, let’s do it.”

 

 

 

She does not begin to feel remorse for her frigidity until Shiro leads her into the Lion’s only living quarters– a small room with a single bunk–and he leaves her to sleep on the bed while muttering about sleeping on the cockpit.

“It’s a tight fit but we should be able to sleep fine.” Allura wants to argue but Shiro leaves before she could get in a word and when she sinks into the cot, she can’t help but shiver in the cold and her mind taunts her with her own cruelty.

_Loyalty should not be condemnation._  She could almost hear the words fall from her own father’s mouth. She was being too hard on him, she knows… her mind replays their kiss and she wonders how different this would be if she hadn’t rebuked him so savagely. Her heart aches as she closes her eyes and drifts off into dreams that cling tears to her eyes.

 

 

 

 

She wakes to find Shiro in the room, changing out of his armor. She catches a glimpse of his muscular frame before he’s tugging on the black under armor over his body.

“Shiro?”

He tenses and glances over his shoulder. “Good morning.”

Allura nods but looks away when he twists to face her. She can hear him hesitate before he sighs.

“I know you don’t want to hear this from me,” Shiro says, voice low with emotion. “But I’ve thought about it and I changed my mind.”

She glances up, curious yet wary. “About what?”

She does not see remorse in his eyes then and the way he looks at her ignites a ghost of a flame over her body once more. The encore of this sensation does not leave as easily.

“I’m not sorry,” he says and her heart squeezes. She barely manages to swallow before running a palm up her arm. “I won’t regret saving you. Not now. Not ever.”

Allura wants to feel angry like she did hours before. She can’t though and it frightens her how much he could possibly see that.

“You are the leader of Voltron, Shiro,” Allura says with all the composure she can muster. “There are more important things in this universe than me, like defeating Zarkon and ending this war.”

Shiro takes a step and she flinches, taken too much by the ferocity in his eyes before realizing she had pressed her back against the wall. He sees it though, and without another word, he ducks his head and walks out of the room. The flame that surrounds her fades and the cold takes hold again. Allura shivers and hides beneath the single sheet of the cot.

 

 

 

 

He does not approach her after that. Any questions she has, she has to give to him. Any exchanges of words can only begin from her end unless it’s pertinent to survival. In the hours that pass between them, Allura would’ve felt better speaking to a stranger for all that transpires between them.

Yet, every waking moment that follows where she was not forcibly preoccupying herself, Allura’s mind follows the memory of Shiro’s impromptu kiss like a treachery of its own. She feels a familiar flush overtake her, leaving her staring off into space or following the traces of his presence with a strained feeling in her chest. The previous fantasies she had harbored between them in lighter moments within the Castle or whenever she caught him smiling at her were wiped by the bruising nature of the kiss he had pressed against her.

She can not deny that she had greatly haunted the idea of something _more_  between them. Yet she never believed such an idea to be poisoned so much by a reckless action on his end and a colder reaction from her end. Allura had no idea how to cross the bridge between them now. Even less when her mind spins the memory of his regret-less announcement and what deeper meaning it could have.

Did he regret kissing her? Did she?

“Princess?”

Allura startles away from her train of thought, seeing her own surprise reflected from Shiro’s eyes as he looks at her from the other side of the door’s threshold. She is further startled by their proximity, yet instead of leaping away, she freezes.

“Ah, yes?” she stammers and her eyes betray her when they fall over his mouth. His lips move, tongue sweeping lightly over his lower lip and Allura’s stomach wobbles.

“Sorry, did I…disturb you?” He asks, taken just by this abrupt moment as she was.

“N-no,” she says, and she manages to meet his eyes once before glancing down at her hands, cheeks flushing. What was the matter with her? “I was just about to meet you in the cockpit…”

In the days between them, Shiro would turn and leave her, saying nothing else. Instead, he remains; a presence against the threshold of the door and radiating a sort of warmth from his skin that makes her lean in subconsciously.

“Allura…” he says her name and her eyes trail up from the sturdiness of his chest back up the curve of his throat, the cut of his jaw into the emotions broiling in his eyes. She becomes immediately enraptured but sees shame in him that she cannot bear seeing. She realizes then its the first time he’s said her name since rescuing her.

“Shiro…” his name is meant to be uttered as an inquiry, but she’s so breathless she doesn’t know how else to say it.

“I…” he begins. “I just…I didn’t mean to…”

Allura swallows. “What?”

His eyes close and he shakes his head. “It’s nothing… I found more rations in Black’s upper storage unit. We should be fine for a while longer…”

He was gone before she could ask him why.

 

 

 

 

His back aches from sleeping wrong on the pilot’s chair, but he doesn’t want to think of putting the Princess out on anything less. Shiro sighs as his eyes open for the hundredth time as he tries to sleep. He cannot escape the weight of his actions any more than he can escape her very presence. Every moment she passes him, speaks to him, does anything, it throws him to that insane moment when he had her in his arms and his emotions pushed him to close the space between them to kiss her with mindless abandon.

He was not sorry for kissing her at first, feeling the weight of her lips against his to be something he never considered actually needing until it happened. But she flinched from him and he saw the trepidation in her eyes when he approached her and it hit him with the force of a thousand Galra monstrosities. How could he have been such an _idiot?_

Since then, Shiro struggled to bring it up, to rightfully apologize for it. He forced himself on her, and their trust suffered for it. Their friendship suffers for it.

At this moment, Shiro fights off the shame his actions brought and struggles to gain some rest. Yet it eludes him when he needs it most until he huffs out a sigh through clenched teeth and he gets up to find some stored food goo to busy himself with.

The cramped space of the living quarters was obviously only designed to house one occupant, so dealing with two was a stretch by all means. This becomes apparent when Shiro located a packet of goo to sip from and made to return to his chair only to bump into Allura on the way.

His heart leaps when he sees her in front of him, and judging by her wide-eyed expression, she hadn’t expected him either.

“Oh,” they both begin, cutting each other off awkwardly. Allura steps to the side and he notices then that her hair is down and covering her shoulders–the top of her suit had been peeled off to hang around her waist, exposing dark skin and the equivalent of a sports bra. He keeps his gaze elsewhere as he attempts to squeeze past her.

Shiro feels a tug on his wrist and freezes, just as they were almost chest to chest. He looks down to see the crown of her head.

“Are… are you sleeping well?” she asks.

Shiro’s mouth goes dry and he has to clear his throat before saying, “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you…?”

She shakes her head and finally she looks up at him and he sees a vulnerable side to her that takes his breath away–it takes his thoughts away.

“Would you…stay with me?”

He cannot fathom the idea of ever saying no. He nods and when she smiles at him something in him gives. He follows her into the room and there he tries to dispel the feeling her eyes leave on him as they climb into the tiny cot and lay down. He hopes she curls away from him, but his heart races when she rests her head on his shoulder and her hands curl around the fabric of his under armor and his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers against his neck. Her hair teases his ear and nape but he doesn’t move, not when she’s shaking and clinging to him. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you.”

His heart gives. “You have every right to be.”

Her head shakes and her legs thread with his and he can’t stop his hand from finding the curve of her spine and rubbing gentle circles.

“You saved me,” Allura says. “You saved me and I was a fool to attack you for it. I was an even bigger fool to deny how…happy I was that you did.”

Shiro can’t help his lips from quirking a little, the weight was slowly unraveling.

“You would’ve done the same for me,” he says and it yanks a small chuckle from her chest.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she says just as he confirms with a wry smirk.

“No, you wouldn’t.”

They share a small laugh and for a while, they live in the spaces between their heartbeats and the warmth under her fingers.

“That’s not true though,” she says and Shiro cocks a brow, arching his jaw to catch a glimpse of her head as she shifted to peer down at him. “I would have done the same.”

Shiro feels his breath catch in his throat and in the dim light of their shared space, he can see her eyes trail his face, feel them trail his lips.

“I would’ve done the exact same.”

“Even after all this?” he asks and he knows better than to point out the tension that had strained between them. Allura lets out a soft snort and shakes her head.

“That’s where I know you and I are different, Shiro.” Her breath brushes his lips and he parts his mouth just as his eyes begin to flutter close. “You wouldn’t have done what I’ve done.”

His fingers thread into her hair just as he feels her nose brush his. The pressure of her mouth on his was a vastly different feel now in comparison to the despair laced kiss he had rammed into her mouth when he first discovered her. A part of him tingled with the knowledge that she would have done the same, and he wondered about that, faintly wondered how it would have gone if she had been to one to give chase to rescue him and if she had been the one to ram a kiss to his lips. Would he have done the same?

He can’t focus on that now. Not when her lips were taking his and testing his skill on how well he could draw soft noises from her throat. Shiro’s mind fell to a memory then, one of when he was small and he had held a single little flower up to his nose. It’s drooping body and lily white petals had a gentle aroma he could no longer recall, but his body remembered how he had pressed the snowdrop’s petals against his lips.

This does not mimic the same sensation in its butterfly touch, but it does ignite an unknown enjoyment in repeating it every time. It takes him whole.

Shiro shifts, parting his lips further, feeling her tongue brush his and her body give willingly when he turns them on her back. There, he lavishes kiss after kiss against her mouth, taking her sighs into his chest and keeping them preserved in every pulse of his heart.

When they do part in earnest need for air, Allura cards her fingers through his hair and gently caresses his face.

“Thank you, Shiro,” she says.

He cannot hide his smile when he says, “Anytime,” and she pulls him back down. He would spend all his moments kissing her if he could. And they do…even after falling asleep in each other’s arms.

 

 

 

 

The foam from the circular tin drains down the sink as Shiro drags his razor blade over the last streak of white from his jaw. A quick wash leaves him clean, looking no different than he did two weeks ago when their latest mission had yet to begin.

He follows his reflection certainly, looking for any sign of stubble that had yet to be sheared clean. He runs a few fingers across his skin, feeling and finding smooth skin.

A knock at his door takes him away from his ritual and into Keith’s expectant gaze.

“Hey,” Shiro says and draws his towel across his face.

“Hey,” Keith greets with a smile and a nod. “We’re waiting on you for breakfast.”

“Right.” Shiro tosses the towel into the laundry basket and follows after Keith. Their footsteps echo in their ears as they walk out of his room and down the hallways. The Castle’s glowing blue lights hum with a warmth he had grown accustomed to. He didn’t realize how much until he had finally found himself walking through the large hallways again.

“You okay?”

Shiro blinks and looks back at Keith, who was a few feet ahead and waiting patiently. “Yeah, fine,” Shiro smiles. “Better than fine.”

“I’d hope so after all you’ve put us through,” Keith deadpans, but there is a playful gleam in his eyes that puts Shiro at ease. The Paladin leader’s smile waned bashful and sheepish. 

“Not going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Not while I still have to hear Lance wail about you ‘stealing’ Allura from him,” Keith rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “I still wish you two had handled that differently.”

“If by handled, you mean ended up getting caught in each other’s arms, I deny responsibility,” Shiro says through a laugh, following Keith further down the halls. “That was all her.”

“Takes two to tango, Shiro.”

He can’t help another laugh as they make a turn and arrive at the dining hall where Coran was heartily slapping Lance’s wilted spine while Hunk bickered about his food being wasted by Lance’s tantrum. Pidge rolls her eyes when Lance groans miserably. At the other end of the table, Allura squeezes the bridge of her nose with a sigh.

“For the last time, Lance,” Allura snaps. “I was not, nor was I ever, interested! Now, eat your breakfast, you’re making Hunk cry.”

“Give him a break,” Shiro says, gathering the attention of everyone inside as he travels into the dining room and sits casually by Allura’s side. He couldn’t help leaning over to dust a kiss to her cheek before sitting down. “He did just have his heart broken.”

“Like you’re doing much better in helping!” Lance whines before dramatically dropping his face in his food.

“Ugh, dude!” Hunk crows.

“You’re pathetic,” Keith grunts, snidely.

Shiro exchanged a warm glance with Allura, who reaches over and interlaces her fingers with his.

“How’s that for saving the day?” Shiro asks with a grin.

“My hero,” Allura shakes her head but her smile is genuine and he can feel it pulsing in the space between their fingers and the warm moments between heartbeats. 


End file.
